


Full Circle

by Rasalahuge



Series: Concepts Series [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - D/s, F/M, dub-con, mentions of abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 18:06:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasalahuge/pseuds/Rasalahuge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>D/S for the Concepts Series. Five men in Emma’s life and their relationships with her and how, in the end, she came full circle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Circle

**+1**

Neal was Emma’s first Sub. Not the first Sub she had taken to bed but the first that she had looked after. The first that really _needed_ her, her and no one else. It hadn’t been easy. He’d been scared at first, terrified even if he didn’t like to show it. But with gentle coaxing he had come to her and when he melted into her embrace or when he’d let his body go limp, head resting trustingly on her lap while he knelt beside her something inside her purred in delight. She loved taking care of Neal and she thought perhaps that she’d finally found home.

They planned to go to Tallahassee. They planned for Neal to wear her collar. They planned to live instead of run.

Then he was gone. He left her, broke her heart and let her go to prison for his crime. Emma felt a terrible betrayal but also a sinking feeling that she had failed. She’d tried so hard to be what Neal needed but he’d still left her. She must have done something wrong, missed something that he needed or forced him to do something he wasn’t comfortable with. The nightmares of a Dom who cared for and loved their Sub and nightmares were what she had, for weeks straight.

When she found herself staring down at the pregnancy test, the officer dangling the keys to the damn yellow bug before her, she knew. She knew that she would never take another Sub. No one would ever wear her collar.

In that moment she’d never felt less like a Dom. She was helpless and for the first time wished for someone to tell _her_ what to do.

**+2**

Graham was broken, like her. He was a Dom. There was no questioning the quiet look in his eyes, the easy confidence and the way he handled everything with perfectly steady hands. But for all that he had the competence and personality to be one of the best he never used his natural instincts. In fact he shied away from it. Even when there was a desperate need to calm a distressed witness or stop a fight between two bull-headed Doms who couldn’t take no for an answer he never used what came naturally. He asked Emma to interfere, clearly knowing her own issues with her instincts but also sensing that despite that she had never been able to stand by when she might be needed. And Emma did, she did what he asked because she couldn’t bear that broken look in his eyes any more than she could stand by and do nothing when she had a duty.

It wasn’t until she discovered his affair with Regina that she understood that broken look. Until she caught him coming out of her house in the middle of the night looking absolutely wrecked. There were marks around his wrist and neck from restraints, they weren’t bad and would fade by morning but they were also unmistakable. Emma had never hated Regina so much in that moment because Regina, she knew, was a Switch. Regina flaunted the fact around and Emma felt sick. 

Because Regina could be the Sub that Graham needed but clearly was asking him to do something that didn’t come naturally, that he didn’t enjoy. And no matter how much Graham protested that he didn’t mind Emma had seen the broken look in his eyes and knew that it was nothing less than abuse.

It broke her heart and she wanted to take Graham, to scream at him not to do this, to leave the woman that was slowly killing him. But she had no right.

(Secretly, quietly, Emma thought to herself that she’d be the Sub Graham needed. Just for a little while, because it could never be a permanent arrangement, just until she could find him someone better, someone he could look after and learn not to be afraid of what he was)

She had no right but she was so very, very glad when he turned away from Regina. Broke away from the abuse. And now Emma could make it her business, support him so that he didn’t fall back into old habits. Maybe, her heart whispered, by helping Graham she could help herself and they could all heal.

But then he was gone and Emma was alone and she’d never know if it would have been enough.

**+3**

Jefferson was a Sub, or so she thought when she first met him. Standing there in the middle of the road, eyes averted towards the floor and posture deferring to her authority. He also wore a collar. A beautiful thing, dark silk and pale sheepskin, soft and supple. She’d offered to take him home when she realised he was injured, a stabbing sensation in her gut that said he needed looking after. For all he wore a collar there was loneliness in his eyes. So she took him home, despite her need to find Mary Margaret, and accepted the tea he served her without a thought.

The illusion shattered as the tea cup fell to the floor and the last thing she remembered were a pair of eyes burning above her.

After she woke, after she found Mary Margaret and he’d threatened them both at gun point she was taken to another room and he demanded that she make a hat of all things. She could feel it then, the sixth sense that most everyone had, that told him this was not the Sub she thought he was. He met her gaze evenly, his movements fluid and controlled despite his clearly psychotic behaviour. No this was a Dom, just one that was an exceptional actor. But he still wore the collar.

She wanted to ask, but knew better than to prod at what must be a sore point. Why else would a Dom wear a collar when he lived alone in a huge house? Especially when he believed himself to be the Mad Hatter of all things?

She wondered, but it didn’t stop her trying to make her escape. It was in the struggle of their escape that Mary Margaret accidentally tore the collar from his throat and Emma understood. Beneath the collar was a thick, sharp scar encircling his neck. Too clean and too even. It did, she had to admit, look as though someone had tried to decapitate him. A reminder like that and Emma might wear a collar as well.

Once they were free and heading back to the station Mary Margaret asked her about him, she’d felt it too how he’d pretended to be the Sub when he was a Dom. Emma didn’t give her an answer but did remember that moment in prison when she’d felt so alone and so helpless and wanted someone, anyone to come and look after her. She understood the attraction of giving up control, even if she knew she’d rebel the moment someone tried to take control from her. For the first time since she picked him up from the road Emma felt sorry for Jefferson, psychotic though he was, he was lonely and broken, just like Graham had been. Just like she was.

**+4**

August made Emma nervous. She liked him, it was hard not to with his easy smiles and flirting, but there was an air around him that said he knew more than he was saying and she didn’t like that. She didn’t like that he wasn’t honest either. Strangely though, despite this he was easy to trust, too easy in many respects.  
August also had no orientation at all and that infuriated Emma because it made her intensely curious about him. People who were neither Doms nor Subs nor Switches were not unheard of but they were rare. Emma had never met someone like that before and she’d love to know more about it, but she never asked. She didn’t know how to without sounding horribly rude or prejudiced. She suspected August knew however and found it amusing, probably he was used to that sort of reaction and if he was he’d either have to find it funny or else he’d get sick to death of it. Emma knew she would.

All in all she had so many conflicting feelings about him it wasn’t much of a surprise that he put her on edge. Her instincts flared up, wanting to take control, to make him submit to her and answer all her questions. The darker side of a Dom’s instincts that, in the past, had caused any number of socio-political issues. It was the part of a Dom’s instincts that took pleasure in _mine_ , in possession. She wanted August at her feet with his secrets spilling from his lips.

In the end he told her his secrets anyway, without submitting to her at all, and she almost wished that she didn’t like him. She almost wished she was one the prejudiced assholes that couldn’t accept someone with no orientation because at least then she would have an excuse. She hated that when he revealed all his secrets she felt more uncomfortable. She hated that she couldn’t just like him for who he was as he tried to get her to believe in a fairy tale. To believe she was a saviour when she couldn’t even look after her own Sub properly.

**+5**

Hook was a contradiction that confused and irritated her. Mary Margaret assured Emma that in the Enchanted Forest they still had Doms and Subs but that society wasn’t structured around them the way it was in her world. The emphasis just wasn’t there. It explained why no one even blinked at Ashley and Sean, two Subs, who would be a curiosity at best in any other town in the US. It also explained how Gold, who was the subbiest sub Emma had ever met, could stride around, his back straight, terrifying everyone and how he could stare down even the fiercest Doms without the slightest tremble.

Hook was similar in that regard. He was a Dom, that wasn’t in question, but he submitted to her freely with coy smirks and flirtatious banter and didn’t seem to care that he was sending her instincts haywire. He threw out an air of intense control but his actions, his words, everything else about him screamed that he needed someone to look after him. And, in spite of herself, Emma wanted to be that person. She wanted to get him to submit to her, to just _stop_ for a moment and calm down. He was a whirlwind that caught Emma up.

She came close, close to claiming him as hers. In the end however she couldn’t. She remembered Graham, who was hurt so badly by being forced into what was unnatural. She remembered Ashley and Sean, who loved each other fiercely and looked after each other as best they could but sometimes ended up shouting at one another, silently screaming for help, until Ruby intervened and took over for both of them. It worked for them, but Emma knew that she couldn’t do that and she didn’t think that Hook could either. For all he submitted to her in some respects she knew that it only went so far, if she pushed then he would draw the line and push back. So in the end she left him tied up and she knew that he knew it was not just a question of trust.

**+1 again**

Neal was a mess. Emma had seen it the moment she ran him down on the streets of New York and in the way he went straight for a drink when she recognised him. She had seen it the moment she met Tamara who placed her hand on his neck and collar in public even though he was clearly uncomfortable. She had seen it the way, when she mentioned her suspicions, he trembled even though he said he trusted Tamara. There was, however, nothing she could do about it so long as Neal wore Tamara’s collar. She might not like it but he had made his choice and he had broken her heart, even if the reasons for that were not what she had thought they were.

But then he was dead, at Tamara’s hand, and she wished that she had just done something. Anything that would mean he didn’t die from a betrayal from the one person he should have been able to trust completely.

Then he wasn’t dead, but he was even more of a mess than before and everyone else seemed to be blind to it. She watched him at the welcome home party, watched how he was pale with bags under his eyes, how he trembled whenever a Dom (even sweet and gentle Belle who tamed the beast and who Neal reluctantly liked despite her relationship with his father) approached him. He didn’t smile except for Henry and he always found an excuse to escape conversation within a minute of someone coming to talk to him. He was, Emma decided, in desperate need of help but couldn’t bring himself to ask for it.

Emma watched him and remembered Graham, who was abused and broken but who had died before she could help him. She watched him and remembered Jefferson who was so lonely he pretended to be something else to protect himself. She watched him and remembered August and his secrets and how he was a child again now, not the man that she was uncomfortable around but liked anyway. She watched him and remembered Hook whose definition of submission was flexible but only because he knew himself so well. She watched Neal and knew that it was time that she stopped running away from herself and who she was. She was a Dom and it was part of her duty to help other people. Neal needed her help and so she would help him.

She didn’t approach him at the party but went to him the next morning to the apartment Gold had just given to him (there had been arguments about that but Gold was apparently more stubborn than Neal) when he finally gave in and moved to Storybrooke fully.

“Emma,” He was surprised when he answered the door but he also looked wrecked. There was a look in his eyes that she hadn’t seen since she’d found out about Regina and Graham.

“Neal,” She gave him a soft smile, “It’s alright,” She said, “I’m here to help you, you can let go now. I’ll look after you,” She promised and then waited, watching as Neal’s face went from surprised to wary to exhausted before he finally just crumpled.

“Emma,” He sobbed a desperate plea for help and Emma took him into her arms and led him into the apartment.

Five months later she gently fastened a collar of soft leather around Neal’s neck. A full circle, she admitted ruefully, was something of a symbol for them. They’d come a long way but they had, as they once promised, finally found home.


End file.
